More Thoughts on Adonalsium and the Cosmere’s “Back Story”

[Confused]

I’ve speculated a lot lately about Adonalsium’s Shattering, including Frost and Hoid’s role in it and whether Adonalsium anticipated and planned for it. I want to take this discussion one step further, tying in Iriali mythology and the existence of unique Shardworlds; and exploring whether Adonalsium is actually dead and what was actually “Shattered.” Unlike other of my posts, this one is pure conjecture without any supporting evidence.

 

Is Adonalsium the Iriali “One Who Became Many”?

 

Many posters (most recently Stormgate, who reminded me of Ym) have pointed out the similarity between Ym’s description of the “One” and Adonalsium’s Shattering:

 

“Long ago, there was only One. One knew everything, but had experienced nothing. And so, One became many—us, people. The One, who is both male and female, did so to experience all things...Eventually, all will be gathered back in—when the Seventh Land is attained—and we will once again become One.” [WoR Interlude I-2.]

 

“People” already existed when the Shattering occurred. Rather than a reference to the Shattering, we could interpret Ym’s statement as the reason why Adonalsium created the Cosmere’s Physical Realm in the first place: “One knew everything, but had experienced nothing.” Adonalsium converted part of his own soul into the Physical Realm to gain such experience, at least in Iriali mythology. And his conclusion sounds like the end result of a dynamic system that has wound its way down, reverting to its original Spiritual Realm state.

 

But Ym’s statement is also a fair metaphor for the Shattering and a clue to what might have been Adonalsium’s “plan.” Brandon does love foreshadowing. Perhaps Adonalsium had become “bored” with the universe he created. He may have felt his “wholeness” diminished his creative capacity. He needed to “shake things up” to get past his “writer’s block.” Maybe he not only knew in advance but actually engineered or permitted the conspiracy that Shattered him.

 

Did Adonalsium Have “Perfect” Foresight?

 

Could Adonalsium have engineered events even if he wanted to? Unlike the Shards, whose ability to see the future in many cases is limited by their mandate (intent), Adonalsium should be omniscient. Omniscience, omnipresence and omnipotence are the three characteristics of God in monotheistic religions – “all-knowing” about the past, present and future; present everywhere; and all-powerful. Brandon has said the Shards, in comparison, are like Greek gods – mortals who have ascended to hold great (but limited) power and who remain subject to their mortal foibles. If Adonalsium is like “God” and not a “god,” he should have perfect foresight.

 

But Brandon has also said that “future sight” in the Cosmere is based on quantum mechanics probability principles, rather than the “deterministic” mechanisms proposed by his influences Baruch Spinoza and Isaac Asimov (in The Foundation Trilogy). The M:SH plot demonstrates Brandon’s approach. It is unclear why Adonalsium should have greater foresight than the most far-seeing of the Shards: presumably Cultivation, Odium or Preservation (of the ones we’ve seen). Maybe the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but this at least raises a question about the infallibility of Adonalsium’s future sight.

 

Foreseeing the Shattering and its results may not have been easy even for Adonalsium. At best he could hope to see the “main line” of probabilities and place his bets accordingly. That’s partly why Hoid is such an interesting character. He is the “wild piece,” the joker, the chance element anticipated by the Diagram (WoR Chapter 85 Epigraph.) How much Hoid helps or hinders Adonalsium’s plan should continue to be fun to follow.

 

Did Adonalsium Create the Future Shardworlds for More Varied Magic Systems?

 

Assume that Adonalsium did intend the Shattering as a way to spread new and different forms of himself around the Cosmere, and assume further he had the foresight to set up this possibility. The future Shardworlds he created would by his design then be different from one another. Adonalsium would WANT new and unique magic systems from the interaction of his Shards and the Shardworlds. Forum speculations about different planetary “essences” and “foci” may simply be a reflection of his plan.

 

To “experience all things,” he would further want his magic to be passed down to “us, people.” This may be the reason investiture wants to be used. Through “cracks in the soul,” genetic manipulation and the gift of Shards, investiture seeks out and enters the SpiritWebs of sentient life. People become magicians, creating greater magical diversity across a wide swath of the Cosmere. Magical entropy in action!

 

Is Adonalsium Dead?

 

As pointed out by Pagerunner below, Adonalsium is “undeniably and reliably dead.” [“Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead,” The Wizard of Oz.] Pagerunner reminds us that “death doesn't always mean the end of the story, in the Cosmere.” Leras tells Kelsier in M:SH that the more heavily invested a person is, the longer it takes for them to “die.” Brandon has also said killing a Shard takes a very long time – how much longer would it take for Adonalsium himself to die?

 

It’s hard to imagine the Vessels waiting around for their allocated share of power. If the power were already leaking away, like Ruin and Preservation’s power when Sazed held out his hands, why would it have divided itself equally among them? I’ve suggested elsewhere that Shard mandates (intents) came about because of the psychological make-up of each Vessel – the power entered each Vessel based on the Vessel’s individual Connection to that aspect of Adonalsium. But it wouldn’t have entered them in equal shares unless the Vessels took some action to ensure power equality.

 

Which brings me to the next question…

 

What Was Actually “Shattered”?

 

Hamilcar in an interesting post opined that Adonalsium was the “god metal” of the God named “Adonai.” (I suppose the God could have been named “Adonals,” but whatever…) IOW, Adonalsium was the Physical Realm “power” of the God, just as Lerasium and Atium were the Physical Realm power of Leras and Ati, respectively.

 

If so, that would explain what “Shattered” at the Shattering. Ironically, I suggested something like this in a parody about the Shattering I posted last summer – the Vessels were conducting an autopsy on a dragon named Adonalsium and accidently dropped his gemheart, shattering it. (Young Frankenstein, anyone?)

 

Simply killing Adonalsium would not have “Shattered” his power, if Leras is precedent. Maybe that’s why Khriss in M:SH described the event in the conjunctive: the Vessels “killed Adonalsium, ripping it apart and dividing its essence between them…” First the Vessels killed him by ripping him apart and THEN divided his essence among them – by Shattering his power.

 

This does sound like Adonalsium had a gemheart or something similar, doesn’t it? Maybe the “weapon” (for the Shattering, at least) was a simple pickaxe aimed at the precise spot to create sixteen equal parts? Or maybe the entire gemheart (or whatever) was crushed into tiny bits and equal portions assigned to each Vessel by weight. The pickaxe and other equipment they used became dulled by usage – “expended” and “changed.” (I am being fanciful here – partly…)

 

Stormgate compared the assassination itself to Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (“E tu, Cephandrius?”) (Unfortunately, he posted on March 11 – he should have waited four more days until the Ides of March.) As The Invested Beard said in response, “Leras does have a very odd relationship with that bone handled knife of his...” Made of aluminum maybe?

 

Khriss, of course, may be misinformed about these events. It’s clear from her conversation with Kelsier that she herself has never spoken with a Shard. We don’t know how she acquired her information about the assassination or the Shattering. Maybe Hoid or Frost told her.

 

The other question is how the Shards could have obtained access to the powers of creation simply by dividing Adonalsium’s “essence” among them. Yolen isn’t Scadrial, where an Allomancer could metabolize the ingested bits of “essence.” Or maybe they somehow could – something more for us to think about.

 

The important point, however, is that killing Adonalsium and dividing his “power” doesn’t necessarily destroy all of his spirit (which permeates everything). Adonalsium could also have squirreled away a bit of his consciousness too, stored in advance in some remote corner of the Cosmere. Adonalsium did leave splinters on Roshar, after all. Is that why Honor and Cultivation went there, to “bind” and “regrow” Adonalsium? Is that why Odium followed them, to make sure they couldn’t interfere with his plan to be Last Shard Standing?

 

One final thought on this subject: if Adonalsium’s essence was powdered into equal portions for the Vessels to consume, maybe they left over a tiny unseen grain. Maybe a bystander viewing these events might have noticed it and, after the Shards departed, picked up the tiny grain and swallowed it. Hoid maybe, the “smoke” to Adonalsium’s “flame”? That would explain quite a bit…

 

How Do You Remake God?

 

The Iriali myth contemplates a time when “we will once again become One.” Many Forum posters see this as referring to Adonalsium’s reconstruction. The shoal their theory crashes on is lack of a reconstruction mechanism: how can this happen?

 

The answer I believe is “mandate-meshing”: Moogle’s excellent theory entitled “Intent Meshing: How Magic Systems Arise” That theory states that the mandates (intents) of different Shards can join together to create new magic systems. More fundamentally, the theory predicts that Shard mandates can merge into one another to create altogether new investiture. We know this happens on Roshar – Radiantspren are mixtures of Honor’s and Cultivation’s investiture, each of which can do things that pure Honor or pure Cultivation investiture cannot do on their own.

 

What happens, then, if you “mesh” ALL Shard mandates together? Theoretically, the investiture should LOSE all mandates, becoming pure unfiltered Adonalsium investiture. As it was, so shall it be…

 

This may be Hoid’s goal or the goal of or one or more of the “secret societies” lurking in the Cosmere. We suspect from Sixth of the Dusk that the people seeking to exploit the magic of First of the Sun come from Scadrial after they discover space travel. Perhaps they visit a minor Shardworld because the magic there presumably came from Adonalsium directly. No Shard (as far as we know) invested in minor Shardworlds. This magic can act as a “seed” with which to catalyze the Adonalsium-reconstruction process. Again, did Adonalsium anticipate this?

 

Conclusion

 

Conjecture piled on conjecture. I hope you find it entertaining during these between-book doldrums. Regards all!

 

Postscript:

 

I remain unfamiliar with a lot of internet protocol. When I went to college, electric typewriters were novel and expensive and personal computers had not yet been invented. I don’t know what gives cause for down-votes. I’ve assumed that if you don’t like what I post, you’ll just ignore it unless I make a personal nasty comment about someone.

 

But this post (and another recent post) were each down-voted for some reason. Could someone explain why? I don’t want to cross any lines I’m unaware of. I look at the 17^th Shard Forums as a place where we can talk about each other’s positions and find “truth” somewhere in the middle. Am I missing something?

Edited March 24, 2016 by Confused

[Pagerunner he/him]

imriel gets some nice tidbits in his signed books - there's another one that is directly relevant to your speculations:

 

Adonalsium shattered because he was killed."

 

Source: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/52731-confirmation-adonalsium-was-a-living-being/

 

It presents a direct cause-and-effect between the Shattering and the killing. This tells us that Adonalsium was definitely alive, and that he is definitely dead. (Granted, death doesn't always mean the end of the story, in the Cosmere.)

 

Another WoB of relevance:

 

Q: You've said that Splintering a shard is essentially the same thing as the shattering of Adonalsium, repeated on a smaller scale.

A: Yeah.

 

Source: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/2955-seattle-signing/?p=49044

 

When Ruin tried to Splinter Preservation, he was not destroying Lerasium in the Physical realm. So, I don't think Adonalsium started out as a gemheart-like embodiment of power that was Shattered separately from killing its holder.

 

It is telling that Preservation did not splinter on its own after Leras died, but to draw a direct comparison between Adonalsium and Leras would be to say that Adonalsium is a Yolish human. It's definitely a possibility; however, if Adonalsium was an actual deity, or something akin to a super-Spren (wait, I think we're already calling Stormfather a super-Spren... mega-Spren? ultra-Spren? turbo-Spren?!?), then his consciousness might have been more closely tied to the power than it is with a human holder of a Shard. So, the way to kill Adonalsium is different than the way to kill a human Shardholder, and that difference also Shatters the power that is being held.

 

(Now that I mention it, though, it is interesting that the Ire didn't think Ati didn't know how to shatter Shards... obviously, he did, since he tried it, but did the Ire know that he was involved in the original Shattering of Adonalsium? Maybe they have some sizeable gaps in their understanding of the Cosmere...)

[Stormgate he/him]

I apologize for my posting time, and thank you for recognizing my input.

You have put the evidence we have into one of the most sound theories I have seen on the Shattering.

[Confused]

First, thanks again, Pagerunner, for pointing out that WoB about Adonalsium being dead. Have an upvote for your correction. I’m embarrassed to have overlooked it; hence, the amendment of the OP. You may still disagree with what I said, but at least I won’t have been factually wrong.

 

I wanted to respond to the rest of your post here. You cite a WoB that “Splintering a shard is essentially the same thing as the shattering of Adonalsium, repeated on a smaller scale.” [Emphasis added.] “Essential” is not “identical.” I think that the broad method is the same – you have to kill the mind that wields the power. But the result is not.

 

The difference lies in what I pointed out in the amended OP: splintering leaves bits of power seeking new minds to direct them, but the process doesn’t necessarily result in equal pieces of the resulting free-floating investiture. And there are so many more splinters than there are Shards, if Sel is any example. The Shattering OTOH did cause Adonalsium’s power to allocate itself to each Vessel in equal portions. That suggests the specific method involved in the Shattering was somewhat different – more focused and intentional.

 

You agree that splintering and Shattering are not precisely the same thing: “So, the way to kill Adonalsium is different than the way to kill a human Shardholder, and that difference also Shatters the power that is being held.” As I state in the OP, I think the difference was that Adonalsium’s killing and the Shattering were different steps. The conspirators needed to obtain the power quickly because, as mortals, they would not have lived long enough to become Vessels if they waited for the power to leak out in its natural course.

 

Ruin had killed Preservation hundreds if not thousands of years before the events of Mistborn. His long slow “strangulating” death wouldn’t have left splinters until his mind – his Cognitive Shadow – was completely gone. Because the Shattering appears to have happened over a short period of time, some different process must have been involved.

[Yata he/him]

A long time ago, in another topic (that at the moment I don't remember) I developed this theory about the Shattering itself:

 

Adonalsium was a more etherogeneous being than the shards (we have some Wob about the Shards existence in Adonalsium, like now Sazed is Harmone and is Ruin & Preservation in the same way), when He died and his "central control" was no more, He (and his power) shattered this different amounts of power (in the same way happened in the Shattered Plains to the Oathgate, the weak point was destroied leaving a regolar landmass) long this "weakspot".

Now the Shards are a more homogeneous power, they have no weakspot and it took moore strenght to break them. But when the force is enough they explode in a lot of Splinters (like the rest of the Shattering plains for example).

 

This is my idea and until SH was without problem, but now with the Khriss's words (if she is right) we know that Adonalsium's Shattering creates the same number of Shard of his killers... this can't be a coincidence.

Or the killers made something to Adonalsium to manage the Shard's born or this 16 people was recruited because Adonalsium will Shatter in 16 Shards (16 peoples with the right Connections to pick up the new formed Shards)

 

PS: Sorry I realize that my explaination was confused (no joke with the homonym Sharder XD) but it's a bit difficult to explain my thought 

Edited March 25, 2016 by Yata

[KSub]

Confused, I think that if you received down votes it was either something people Very strongly disagreed with or they were just trolling. The Internet is full of chulls.

In regards to the shattering, I believe that splintering a shard is exactly as it sounds. Get a shard to divide their power until they are sufficiently weaker than another shard(odium/ruin) and then the second shard can forcibly break the remainder of their power.

[The Invested Beard]

So there is a detail that I don't know if anyone has looked for up to this point. As pointed out in the original post, I am very interested in Leras' knife and think it has some important connection to past events during or before the shattering. The question is: Have we seen any of the other original vessels (in what little screen time we've gotten from them) mentioned bearing a knife? I can't for the life of me remember in any of the previous descriptions whether or not we've seen another.

 

Granted, I could be grasping at straws here, but it may also be something to look for in the future as a tell.

[Yata he/him]

So there is a detail that I don't know if anyone has looked for up to this point. As pointed out in the original post, I am very interested in Leras' knife and think it has some important connection to past events during or before the shattering. The question is: Have we seen any of the other original vessels (in what little screen time we've gotten from them) mentioned bearing a knife? I can't for the life of me remember in any of the previous descriptions whether or not we've seen another.

 

Granted, I could be grasping at straws here, but it may also be something to look for in the future as a tell.

The only Vessel's descriptions are of R&P's Vessels...If you talk about the "orginal vessels" only Ati and Leras both in SH and HOA (very few words of both)

[The Invested Beard]

The only Vessel's descriptions are of R&P's Vessels...If you talk about the "orginal vessels" only Ati and Leras both in SH and HOA (very few words of both)

 

Well there's also some physical description of Tanavast in SA isn't there?

[Yata he/him]

Well there's also some physical description of Tanavast in SA isn't there?

I don't rememeber if one of Dalinar's vision had Tanavast in his form, or if He always used some "dummy/actor" to give his own messages.

Edited March 29, 2016 by Yata

[The Invested Beard]

So I found the passage, it's the last chapter of Way of Kings. Dalinar has a vision with what appears to be Tanavast's actual form. The description we're given only mentions his skin, hair and clothes, no mention of a knife. That's not to say he didn't have one, but no confirmation from that one. Bummer. I still think we might see the same type of knife with more of the vessels if we start seeing more of them...

[Yata he/him]

So I found the passage, it's the last chapter of Way of Kings. Dalinar has a vision with what appears to be Tanavast's actual form. The description we're given only mentions his skin, hair and clothes, no mention of a knife. That's not to say he didn't have one, but no confirmation from that one. Bummer. I still think we might see the same type of knife with more of the vessels if we start seeing more of them...

I have to be honest, I don't think the "knife" is something different from a metaphor...something like a cognitive reflection of the ability of the Vessel to hurt something/someone or some dedicated Splinter of itself (like a Shardblade).... If I remember right, we saw that knife in action and it didn't anything more than cut from the cognitive to the physical (some in common to the Shardblade's cutting between realms ability).

[gokucauthon]

Dont post alot but someone above mentioned the shards being compared to Greek gods. Well the Greek gods overthrew their parents, the titans. What if the shards are andolisiums children! Who would be able to hold a part of ando's investure better than his kids. They each got the trait that fit them best. Ruin/pres, bitter sibling rivalry, then the shards on elantris, twins maybe, and threndory is in memory of their mom! Hmmmmmm!!!!! Theory storm abrewing! Theory to come!

Edited April 5, 2016 by gokucauthon